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Peter Strickland: a mind (and ears) blown by the hiss, stab and scream

Considering how important audio is to Peter Strickland’s new film, Berberian Sound Studio, it seems almost perverse to hear him rhapsodizing about raw analog tape hiss.

“There’s this great album by a band called Reynols from Argentina,” the 40-year-old British writer/director says in an interview during last September’s Toronto International Film Festival.

“They did an album called Blank Tapes, and the whole thing is made from just blank tapes. It’s all just studies in tape hiss, almost similar to what John Cage was doing. Really quite rock ’n’ roll in the way it’s textured, and very visceral.”

Strickland speaks with enthusiasm and geekish authority. He could probably convince you that a telephone dial tone is more interesting than a symphony orchestra.

He has an obvious affinity for Gilderoy, the meek and meticulous sound boffin played by Toby Jones in Berberian Sound Studio, who gets more than he bargained for when he signs on as soundman for a horrific Italian giallo film.

Yet Strickland’s sonic fascinations don’t spring from a purist’s notion of the “right” way that things should sound. Although Berberian is rooted in the 1970s analog world, much of the film was done digitally, the audio included.

“I’m not one of these people who say analog is better. Because I remember there are some awful things about analog, how time-consuming it is. I’ve worked with both tape and (celluloid) film, which means using ‘trim bins,’ and if you lose a trim, it just takes you forever to find it. So I kind of like it that both analog and digital are available.”

Strickland’s interest in giallo is another curious thing about him.

“I’m not really into horror,” he admits. “It’s just that the atmosphere of giallo films is so phenomenal. The murder, I can take or leave. The plot, I can take or leave. It’s just that these films have a sensory overload that’s so incredibly bombastic, so rock ’n’ roll, that it blows my mind.”

His interest in giallo movies actually came through the ear rather than the eye.

“The soundtracks of those films led me in. Something may be called ‘trash’ because it’s in the horror genre, but actually, it could be incredibly advanced musically, even if the sound is dissonance.

“It’s all about context for me, and how sounds are placed. You may have the innocent sound of a cabbage being ‘stabbed’ when you’re cooking it, but place that sound in the context of a woman being stabbed in a film, and it’s completely different. It becomes something very visceral and disturbing.”

Strickland follows his muse to interesting places. His first feature, the 2009 payback drama Katalin Varga that was a hit on that year’s festival circuit (it won the Silver Bear for sound design at the Berlin fest), was shot in Transylvania with actors who spoke Hungarian. It’s a language not spoken by Strickland, whose schoolteacher parents hailed from Britain and Greece. He just thought it would be an interesting way to spend a nice inheritance from a late uncle.

Strickland’s mind moves in mysterious ways. Berberian has an obvious nod to David Lynch’s twisty L.A. thriller Mulholland Drive, with its sense of unfathomable dread and such visual cues as a flashing red “SILENZIO” sign. Strickland acknowledges the connection, yet insists it wasn’t deliberate.

“That was an accident, which no one believes me for. I could have stolen from many things, and Toby did tell me on set, ‘Here you go, you’ve nicked something else!’

“But I didn’t steal that. I’ve seen Mulholland Drive. It’s not like I haven’t seen it, but I just forgot about it … It’s all subconscious, I guess.”

He does cop to an abiding interest in Lynch’s work that goes right back to Eraserhead, the midnight auteur’s 1977 debut.

“The one person who really got me into sound was Alan Splet, when he worked with Lynch on the Eraserhead soundtrack. I think that was the first time I realized how sound can be not just functional, but also expressive. It can convey a whole state of mind, convey a whole world.

“What’s interesting about Splet’s work is that now it’s become very generic. He made what’s called ‘the David Lynch rumble,’ which many, many mainstream films use. It’s even heard in advertising.”

There’s an even better-known stock sound, an agonized yelp called “the Wilhelm Scream,” which has been used in more than 200 films since it was first heard in Distant Drums in 1951. You can hear it online: http://archive.org/details/WilhelmScreamSample.

Strickland agonized over whether to use the sound in Berberian Sound Studio, ultimately choosing not to.

“Yes, we considered using the Wilhelm Scream. There’s so much screaming in the film, and the director (of the giallo film) is lazy, so we thought, ‘Hmmm …?’

“But what worried me was that the film is already full of references, and this one felt too much like nudge nudge, wink wink.”

He also felt a little concerned about having so much Italian in Berberian Sound Studio (the film was shot in Italy), since his debut film was also in a language other than English.

“You start to feel like these people who wear T-shirts in languages they don’t understand. You see it in Europe, old grandmothers wearing tees with foreign languages. In the U.K., it’s the same: very cool retro T-shirt with Cyrillic or Chinese or Japanese text, but you don’t know what it means, do you?”

I tell him about an ironic T-shirt I’ve seen in Toronto, which bears the image of Che Guevara above the words “I Have No Idea Who This Guy Is.”

“I like that!” Strickland says. “If I see that one, I’m going to buy it!”

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